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A friend of mine wrote this post and, with her permission, I am sharing it with you. Enjoy!

I shall no longer be handing over any more of my hard earned cash to Showtime.

Ask me why!

Well, kids, I have a hate on for the producers of a certain show.

The longer they pander to the lowest (craziest) segment of their population of viewers the more concerned I become for the well being of their actors. With each gratuitous sex scene, with each insinuation that a deeply dysfunctional relationship (or two . . . or three) is the very essence of true and abiding love, with every grossly inappropriate nude scene (it happens often so I threw it in twice) they attach more danger to the people who work for them. Let’s face it, naked attracts more crazy than clothed. Dysfunction leads to dysfunction. So, when you combine all these elements with the fact that people in the public eye already have to deal with stalkers and the like, you may as well paint a bulls eye on their backs. In short, with every passing moment I become more and more convinced that these people don’t give a rat’s ass about the people who work for them.

I have come to believe that the only thing that matters to them is, either, a., selling the product, in which case they’ve sold themselves and their actors down the river, or, b., living out some sick fantasy using their characters as their stand ins. I hope it is not the latter. I would rather be wrong than right on this one. I sincerely hope they’ve gone crazy for the money. I would love to know that the whole point of the series has not become that two sad, old queens, who couldn’t get laid at Studio are using the characters (creations, let us not forget, of another person) to live out their twisted ideal of what it is to be a gay man. I hope that they aren’t using their actors as veritable blow up dolls. In fact, let’s all send up a little prayer, or hope, or wish, or whatever the hell you’d like to call it, that this is not the case.

However, I have fear in my heart that it is.

It has gotten to the point that I actually feel shame for ever having watched this show. If someone asks me if I've ever seen it I lie. I act as if I have no earthly idea what they're talking about. Why? Because, I feel that I, in some small part, have contributed, by paying those Showtime fees, to the utter crazy that this show, and everything attached to it, has become. I fear that if the viewers, myself included, had stopped tuning in when the show first set off on it’s downward trajectory to crazy town maybe these simpletons would be out of a job and the actors could have moved on with their lives and careers. However, we did not. We stuck it out. We hoped for better. We hoped that it wouldn’t turn out to be as bad as we felt it was.

Well, guess what. It is all the bad things we feared it was becoming.

It is that bad. It is that obnoxious. It is that degrading.

I can only say that I am sorry for any part, no matter how minute, I had in keeping this show around by paying the Showtime fees.

I hope that this makes sense. It’s early and I’m tired. Also, I would like to state, for the record, that these theories are just that. They’re theories. I have no real inkling to go by except a gut feeling. I have no proof. However, I can read a damn context clue and the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

In conclusion, if I could get one message to these gentlemen (and I use the term loosely) it would be that it is one thing to sell your own soul and quite another to sell the soul of the person standing next to you.

What the? This is ludacrous. Truly. I read that thinking, "Now this is someone with far too much time on their hands."

It's a television show. Of course their doing it for money. Let's step into the now, shall we? Furthermore, the actors are adults, and believe it or not, they've been doing this awhile. They have the power to say, "Um, no, sorry... Not going to do another ass/dick shot, sorry." For instance, Randy must obviously have it in his contract that we never see his wang, because I can't recall ever seeing it, but I've seen Gale's on more ocassions than I can count. Their not innocent, helpless little bunnies, sitting there being forced to do anything. Their actors, and yeah, they're in it for the money, too.

I, for one, will happily shell out the cash to Showtime again this season, and will proudly proclaim my status as a QAF fan. I like the plot, it's why I stay. But I don't dislike the porn. It's a TV show... It's entertainment. So many people miss that point.

Not to insult your friend, but that entry came off very tin-foil hat, conspiracy theory to me.

It was written about QAF by a friend of mine who's seen all the episodes & is genuinely ticked about the show's lack of quality since after Season 1. She wrote this rant about the show to express her feelings about certain things on the show and behind the scenes.

The whole point of QaF was to open people's eyes about real gay life and I think that it's succeeded in a big way. And if I hear one more thing about all the relationships on QaF being dysfunctional and/or unhealthy I think I'll scream. Their relationships are *real*. That's not something you get a lot of on TV shows but QaF has reality oozing from it's every pore. That's why it makes people so uncomfortable.

All the time I read this, my mind wouldn't believe someone could actually think this.

Of course it's for the money! Why the hell else would people do tv??? And if these actors wanted safe, they'd be doing Will & Grace, on a major cable mainstream channel like ABC or NBC or Fox or something.

I don't have showtime... I can't have it since I still live with my parents (yeah, I'm 23, it's normal for Puertoricans, do not mock me ;-P) and they would not approve. So I buy and hide the DVD's and ask friends to tape it for me.

Because, yeah, the sex scenes are awesome, but the stuff I re-watch and watch time and again are the relationship scenes (the dance, the reunification dance, the walk/hug on liberty, the fights, the misunderstandings, the pushing away) because it's real.

This show is *real*. It's not about being gay. It's about *reality*... the reality of relationships, and being afraid, and hanging on and pushing away and finally realizing you *need* this person, but still being too fucking afraid...

Relationships are *this*. It's not the rose-colored 'we always get along and never fight' view in many shows still out there. Those shows made me think why the fuck aren't my parents like that? Because it's not real. It's not like that 24/7/365! People fight, they make up, they have sex that doesn't mean anything and have sex that's everything.

These people know what they're doing. And it was about fucking time someone did it. I shall shell out the money for the dvd's and soundtracks and books, and I shall beg my friends to tape it for me, and proudly say I'm a QaF fan!

I don't know how anyone can defend a show that gave us Jerk-At-Work, The funeral that almost was (Vic deserved better) and Brian as an unrealistic superman, running to the rescue of everyone. Add to that the fact that Randy Harrison called the Brian and Justin relationship "abusive" and I think the original poster had a valid argument.

Well, because Jerk-at-work is a reality in real life, many people's funerals end up being about the people attending, not the person they're honoring, and because Brian Kinney is a character that self-portrays a devil may care image, while in fact he cares more about all his friends than can be described in words.

And Brian and Justin's relationship can be abusive... emotionally so... but then, who has never had an emotionally abusive relationship? Be it with lovers, siblings, friends or parents, it always happens. What matters here is that Brian & Justin have found a way to overcome that, grow up and learn that you can't always be pushing away.

What I think is that it's not fair for someone to come into a community that gathers people who love one thing, then openly critize that one thing. There's truth to the old saying that if you don't have something nice to say....

I'm not quite sure what exactly it is your friend is trying to say in this post. It all sounds very vauge to me. Judging from other peoples remarks she seems to be against the image showtime presents in thier show.

I grew up in a very strict Roman Catholic house hold, where the only way to have a happy healthy relationship was to find a nice Roman Catholic boy get married, and have children. When my sister moved in with her boyfriend my parents thought of it as "living in Sin". Coming from this sort of background, QaF has opened my eyes to a whole new idea of a happy healthy relationship. I've seen that you can have a happy relationship without it being a monogamous one. I've seen that family doesn't have to be the basis of a relationship. And most of all, I think Showtime has shown real problems and ways to deal with them. I can not my self think of this show as "bad", "obnoxious", or "Degrading"And as for her thoughts that the show is getting worse. Well as far as lifestyles go I think theyve gotten much better in a typical sense. I mean in season 4, Ben and Michael got married, Brian and Justin seemed to have stabalized, they show Emmett giving up a secrative relationship because he refuses to live a lie, and they show Ted learning to live his life happily. Then there was season 1 where you had Brian fucing everything that moved, Justin "stalking" him, Michael living with a sugar Daddy who treated him lie a child, Ted went after pretty faced people who would turn him down, and then he got into a relationship with a junkie, and Emmett was just there on the perimeter of things as the "typical flaming queer". Now granted I beleived I liked season 1 more then season 4 but as far as "healthy" or "dysfunctional" go....